Saturday, June 2, 2012

Roadblocks

Yes.  That is our green recycle trash can.

Wednesdays are garbage eve.  Alex takes all three of our trash cans out to the street.  We have a blue can for paper and plastic. metal and glass, a grey can for "garbage/garbage", and the green can for clippings, food, etc.

Alex carefully arranges the cans at the curb in front of our house.  He puts them in a row, not too close to each other so that the garbage truck can use the mechanical arm to grab the cans.

Thursdays are garbage days in our neighborhood.  I watch out my window from behind the lace curtain as my neighbor does his weekly thing of going through our garbage and moving the trash cans into totally different locations.  He finds a piece of paper in the green can and he quickly re-assigns it to the blue can.  He decides that a piece of cloth does not belong in the blue can so he relegates it to the grey (garbage/garbage) can.

I watch him for 15 or 20 minutes in total amazement as he goes through his ritual.  In every other way, this is a normal acting man.  Sometimes I call Alex at the office and say "Guess what he's doing?" and Alex will laugh because he knows exactly who "he" is, and exactly "what" he is doing.

Part of me enjoys watching this ridiculous activity, but part of me is annoyed.  What if I threw something "unmentionable" into the trash?  What if there were broken sex toys in there?  What if I threw naked pictures of us in the trash?  What if I threw the prescription bottle for the anti-psychotics in the trash?  See my point?

You may know, but once you move your trash to the street for pick up, you have no legal "expectation of privacy".  For any of you criminals who may be reading this, that means the cops, the DEA, the CIA, and the FBI do not need a search warrant.  You might want to keep this in mind if you throw out trash that links you to nefarious deeds.

The worst part is, my neighbor leaves for work after Alex, and he gets home before Alex.  After the trash is emptied, my neighbor lines up all three of our cans right in front of our driveway so that we can't get a car in or out of the driveway without moving the cans.

I don't like handling trash cans.  I don't like looking at trash either.  We've been here for over ten years.  I expect my neighbor knows us a lot better than we know him by now.

My daughter thinks our neighbor man is a spy.  I think he's more of a recycle OCD type.

Friday, June 1, 2012

Fried Cheese Balls

When I think of cheese, I think of a lovely Stilton, British Blue from England.  Or perhaps a ripe triple creme Brie from France.  Or perhaps a Molitaire Tartuffo like shown in the photo.

The Molitaire Tartuffo, a sheep milk cheese, is veined with truffles.  

I dream of Holland's Boerenkaas, nutty and sharp!  I love the Basque Petit Agour from France.  Good old American Cheddar is fine too.  Stanser Sahaffase is a fine Swiss cheese and very delicious!

What I have never considered is fried cheese balls.  Just the name 'Fried Cheese Balls" makes me gag.  We recently went to dinner with some close friends and they both went into rapture at "Pimento Cheese Croquettes" on the menu.  My mother used to make Salmon Croquettes using corn flakes to hold together the canned salmon.  These balls were then fried in Crisco to a golden brown with warm canned salmon inside them.  Come to think of it, Mom also made a tuna casserole with corn flakes on top too.

Mom used to buy jars of pimento cheese too and use it to spread on crackers.  I'm not really sure what the orange stuff was, but I doubt it was cheese.  Perhaps it was a cheese flavored product.  She also spread the pimento cheese on celery for a healthy snack.  No wonder I was a skinny kid.

My friends indeed ordered the "Pimento Cheese Croquettes" and I had trouble looking at them when they arrived at the table.  The croquettes sat in a pool of red jelly and they were topped with a little circle of green pepper.  They pronounced them "delicious" and devoured them while I carefully averted my eyes.

Those were bloody brown fried cheese balls.  You can't fool me.


Thursday, May 31, 2012

Fools Rush In

I've decided to participate in Nicky and Mikes (We Work For Cheese)  brilliant idea of writing a post every day for 30 days beginning on June 1, 2012. There are NO RULES so that means I have no directions to follow.  For me, that's the major thing as I am hopeless at following directions.

Nicky and Mike and are providing "prompts".  (Surprisingly, the first prompt is "Cheese".)  I don't know why I thought this would be a fun thing to do.  The only reason I'm playing is because I love Nicky and want her to come and live with me and be my sister wife.  This way she has to pay attention to me.

I have almost convinced Nicky to come to visit me with her baby in the near future.  I'm hoping my efforts here help to solidify her decision.  Once she gets here and we start buying shoes, she'll never want to go back home.

The other participants are:  CheesyMike, Cheryl, If I Were God, Katherine, Bryan, Laughing MomMalisa, MikeWJNoNameDufus, Jayne,  and Sandra. Every one of these writers is very good and will do a better job of this than I will.

I may even quit after the first post.  For that matter, I may quit before the first post.

What the hell can one really write about "Cheese"?